Push

This was extremely well done. There were details in this story, little occurrences or passing thoughts, that showed an unusual amount of perception and understanding. Things that wouldn't have made it into the conscious mind of a normal person even having lived the story. Perhaps they were the the result of research and many interviews of social and psychological professionals but I got the impression, for some reason, that they came from the authors mind.

This should be read by everyone, regardless of whether you have the stomach for it or not. The vast majority of our society is not aware of these things and should be. I first saw this lack of awareness about 35 years ago in a social studies class called minority affairs discussing the class text book titled Custer Died for Your Sins by Vine Deloria. After decades of paying attention I believe there's no more awareness now than there was then. ( )

Heartwrenchingly beautiful. Hard to imagine such a life. ( )

I picked this book up in high school because I'd read it on a booklist somewhere. In any case, I was not expecting it.

I read it in one sitting. It's phenomenal, but every time you think it can't get worse, it does. I found myself continuing on in horror, convinced that surely, a moment full of light and puppies or something would happen. I couldn't see the movie when it came out, even though the book was fabulous. I can't reread this book. Ever. However, I recommend it to read once because the story is worth hearing. ( )

Push is the verbally graphic story of an abused child named Precious Jones. Precious bears her father's babies first at age 12 and again at age 16. Suffering physical, verbal and sexual abuse by both parents and serving as a virtual slave to her apartment-bound, welfare-dependent mother, Precious lives in hopeless isolation in Harlem. At 16, Precious is struggling through public school until expelled for being pregnant, although her principal does set her up to enter an alternative school. At Each One, Teach One, Precious meets other troubled girls and they are buoyed by a devoted teacher - Miss Blue Rain - who teaches them to read and write.

Written in the fractured vernacular of this sub-literate teenager, Push — the poet Sapphire's debut novel — is an effective novel. Precious' phonetic dialect and stunted vocabulary add authenticity to her saga and help this hard-luck story grab the reader with its poetic beauty. Push resonates with ugly truths. "I'm alive inside", she writes after attending a meeting of incest survivors, whose confessions are a balm to her shame. "A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I'm winning."

It is stirring to see Precious test the wings of her newfound verbal powers, funny to decode her botched locutions (like "insect" survivors), and sad to watch her revert to frustrated illiteracy when, after progressing by leaps and bounds, she's thrown a tragic, unexpected curveball. Ultimately, however, Precious gains control of her life through writing ("the boat [that:] carry you to the other side") and finds her heroes (Langston Hughes and Alice Walker among them) through books.

Push is an affecting combination of childlike tenderness and adult rage and leaves little doubt that Sapphire's talents as a poet translate artfully into her fiction.

I rate this novel 4 stars. ( )

"The book in the end seems to be more about the triumph and value of a proper education rather Precious's own personal rise above her obstacles and surroundings. "
read more:http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/push-sapphire.html ( )